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I acquired this Kodak Panoram last week. It uses 105 film, but that's the same as 120, so I shot a roll using a 620 spool for feed and a 120 spool for takeup. Then I shot two more rolls using 105 film spools my friend had laying around.

The biggest problem I had was aiming the damn thing. The viewfinder is pathetically small and narrow, you use lines pressed into the leather to guestimate how wide a field the thing takes in. Worse, I think the one on this camera is aimed a titch low -- I shot a roll being VERY careful to have everything running horizontally across the middle of the finder field, with space on top and bottom, and in almost every shot I got a lot more sky, and very little if any bottom.

So this third roll I finally paid more attention to the bubble level, keeping the camera aimed flat ahead (and this only focuses on stuff way out, I understand) so that what I was getting in the viewfinder looked like I'd be chopping off heads.

Only I didn't. They were all nicely centered.

The camera works well otherwise. I have no idea if it has been serviced in the past -- you kind of hope so. The bellows looks new. The meniscus lens won't win any awards but wasn't meant to, it's mostly just fun shooting 90 year old buildings (the theater and train station) with a 90-year-old camera. I get a whopping four shots to a roll, which is better than the original with type 105 film, which was a 6-shot roll which in this camera means three.

Shots are in Ogden Utah -- the Peery's Egyptian Theater, the Union Station (www.theunionstation.org) and Ogden's Notorious 25th Street, where your dad or granddad very possibly had the sort of good time he didn't tell your mother/grandmother about after he got home from WWII.

Yeah the viewfinders suck on the panorams and al vistas.
I shot a few rolls with a 1D at some point but didn't get anything good. You've had better luck. I've been shooting a bit with various size al vistas with better results and find the challenge of composing with a really bad viewfinder interesting. Always a surprise when you look at the film. Kind of fun actually. My favorite right now is a 5B that shoots 5x12" negs. Great to see you out there with them!

I have a Panoram No.1 (model A) from around 1900. The D has a more accurate shutter doesn't it? Spring power for the lower speeds is a little too low on my Model A. That said I've had generally good results using 100-200 ISO films depending on the light.

I like your shots, especially the last one where the fish-eye effect is somewhat reduced by the chosen composition.

I have a Panoram No.1 (model A) from around 1900. The D has a more accurate shutter doesn't it? Spring power for the lower speeds is a little too low on my Model A. That said I've had generally good results using 100-200 ISO films depending on the light.

I like your shots, especially the last one where the fish-eye effect is somewhat reduced by the chosen composition.

Click to expand...

Thanks -- I have no idea how accurate this shutter is -- it feels to me as if, in slow range, it moves a bit more draggy in one direction than the other, but in high range it feels OK either way. In all cases the film handles over- or under-exposure. These shots were on FOMA 200 using the high range speed.

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